Universal LTE?

by Da'Von B.

It almost sounds euphoric but it’s something that many should consider as phone carriers in the US continue to get out of hand. But for the sake of looking for utopia lets look at the state of the wireless carriers and the spectrum they’ll end up using; Verizon is moving to LTE (Long-Term Evolution) standard along with AT&T and more than likely Sprint, with T-Mobile following suit (lets hope the merger with AT&T doesn’t go through). So it would seem that since all four carriers are moving to this new standard I should be able to use any device anywhere right? Wrong, all carriers will use a different spectrum of LTE so phones on one spectrum won’t work on another

Verizon will use 746-787MHz

AT&T will use 704-746MHz

Sprint & T-Mobile are unknown at this time

And this is simply dumb, though there’s a possible work around for this and it comes down to the chip manufacturer and one company that has the potential to do this is Qualcomm. If Qualcomm could make a chip that utilizes all LTE spectrums leaving it to the carrier to simply flip the switch when activated and if a customer doesn’t like coverage or wants to travel elsewhere can cancel sign-up with another carrier and flip the switch there then carriers would be forced to simply compete on price and services.

Though it’s possible that this can already be done, and if so carriers must have some kind of technical barrier related to the LTE spectrum. If this is the case then universal LTE may not happen anytime soon (remember this article is all based on wonder and amusement not to be technically sound). Unless a company like Apple or Googlerola create a device with the one baseband chip suggesting that it’ll be used on all carriers in the US that uses LTE and must simply be flipped on (Apple has been doing some research based around a certain idea of a universal SIM card). It’s something to ponder as carriers become more ridiculous as time passes. Here’s hoping there’s a win for customers for once. Now back to reality you go.